BY right, the setting for this week’s feature should have been gathered at the kitchen table in the Gordon household, chatting with one of Ireland’s most gifted showmen and surrounded by silverware and ribbons won by the family over five decades in the showring. There’s little ‘right’ however about how 2020 has panned out and catching up with Anthony Gordon follows the now predictable pattern of another interview-by-phone.

“We’re fine, thank God. We’ll do our best to stay safe but isn’t it a strange year?” Anthony responded, when asked how he and wife Peggy are coping with Covid-19 restrictions and being cocooned at their Kincon home, near Ballina.

The couple would normally be parked ringside at Newmarket-on-Fergus show on May Bank Holiday Sunday, looking for another potential champion. “Peggy is well able to spot a good one too! But there’ll be no shows this year and that’s that.”

Gordon and his generation have witnessed upheaval and recessions before. Emigration was rife – his late brother Mikey was one of thousands who emigrated to America, although he later returned to Mayo from New York – and farming has changed beyond recognition, since Anthony bought his own 50-acre farm before his 21st birthday.

It was a love of horses that kept him anchored in north Mayo. “We would always have had Irish Draught and Connemara mares working on the farm, my brother Jack was in the homeplace.” Born in Rappa, near Ballina town, that placename reappears in the first mare he started off his successful showing career with. “Rappa Lass, she was a right one, we had fun with her down through the years. You had to be picked to go to Dublin then by Bord na gCapall. She was a smasher, just over 16 hands and by an Irish Draught horse named Barna.”

After that first RDS success with Rappa Lass, Gordon’s list of All Ireland, Balmoral, Dublin and Millstreet showring champions grew with the additions of names such as Sheans Lady (Dangan King), Brighter Star (Golden Warrior), Freefooter (King Elvis) and Nancy Steele (Holycross).

“There was Colman’s Gift, she was by Colman out of a Blue Peter mare, she’s the mother of the horse Timmy Carey has now, Fintan Himself. Then Copper-Coin, by Gold Coin, she was the champion Draught mare and was third in the Breeders Championship with a Holycross filly foal at foot.”

Anthony Gordon's multiple champion Irish Light (Kings Master-Tasset), bred by Laura Kelly in Kilkenny and bought through an advert in The Irish Field

Classifieds finds

The Gordons also enjoyed a purple patch with Kings Master progeny with Full Irish and I’m Irish, their All Ireland and Dublin winners. Another multiple champion was Irish Light bought after her Kilkenny breeder Laura Kelly advertised the Kings Master-Tasset filly in The Irish Field.

Similarly to Rebecca Monahan’s Notalot’s golden year in 2015, Irish Light had her own string of major successes in 2009. That year, she won the ‘Triple Crown’ of two-year-old filly titles, notching up an All Ireland win at Kildysart, the Owen Ryan Cup at Dublin awarded to the champion filly and then followed up with the Limerick Lady crown at Limerick Show.

After ending her in-hand career on this side of the Irish Sea with another All Ireland win in the three-year-old filly final at Bantry, she was sold to Devon owner Cathy Wood. “She’s still breeding away for Cathy. I loved the Kings Masters, they’d great movement as they really used their shoulders,” Anthony remarked.

Another The Irish Field advertisement netted another champion when Gordon bought the Coolcronan Wood filly, Cailin Glic. She won two supreme titles for Anthony at the Irish Draught Horse Society national show (2009, 2010) before going on to add another Dublin win to Gordon’s ever-growing list in 2011.

Cork has proved a lucky hunting ground for the family with Sheans Lady and Brighter Star recorded as two earlier finds. Another good buy for son Dermot, was Kief Queen B, bred by Kieran Fahey. Like Irish Light, she too won back-to-back All Ireland finals at Kildysart (2015) and Bantry (2016), before later claiming the Coote Cup broodmare championship at Dublin for her new owner Yvonne Pearson in 2018.

Although his sire Rhett Butler stood in Co Cork, Butler’s Boy was found in Co Clare. “We bought him off Michael Meade in Miltown Malbay and he was second in Dublin as a three-year-old. The next year, Lily McGowan was producing him under saddle and he was reserve champion.” Bought and renamed Jeeves, the strapping bay went on to lift the Dublin supreme hunter title in 1992 with the late Diana Gilna on board.

The Farney Clover-sired Electric Flame, Dublin two-year-old champion in 2005, was one of several winners produced by the Ballina master craftsman for Limerick man Gerry Mullins. Another Balmoral and Dublin young horse winner was Sir Lancelot, by Western Promise. Both he and his Horos half-brother Forever Noble were bred in Lisburn by the late Amy Brown, a great family friend and were out of her good Clover Hill mare, Clover Blossom. Winning at Balmoral, with their breeder at the ringside, made victory even sweeter for the connections.

Sean Scannell, (left) one of the many longtime friends made through the show scene, and Anthony Gordon at the HSI stallion inspections in Cavan in March \ Susan Finnerty

Solo run

Together with another of Gordon’s string, his trio were the talking horses of the show horse scene in the mid-1990s. The third horse is one that, to this day, Anthony still regards as his favourite: M.V Solo.

“I think he was the best. He had real presence and was a real showman,” he said about the striking bay middleweight, foaled in 1993. By Holycross out of Lissard Girl, by the Wild Risk son Mon Capitaine, he was yet another bred in Cork and Gordon spotted him early on in the year at Newmarket-on-Fergus Show with his owner-breeder, Morgan Sweeney.

The ‘problem’ was he already owned the big winner, Sir Lancelot, an enviable position for an owner. This also made another favourite showring memory when waiting at Galway County Show one year for judges John Kennedy and Luke Doyle to choose their winner from Gordon’s pair of three-year-old entries.

“They were different horses altogether but both very quality and I remember once at Galway County, it took the judges half an hour to decide between him [M.V Solo] and Sir Lancelot. It was a grand show when it was in Clarenbridge, great atmosphere and you’d all the big showjumpers there too,” he said about the Galway County Show in its heyday.

Held in mid June, Sunday’s showing classes often fell on Father’s Day and the young horse classes were often the scene of friendly duels between the Gordons and the Gill family, both from Ballina.

“Westport and Galway were the two main ones before deciding if you had a Dublin horse,” Anthony remarked and while there was a victory in the three-year-old lightweight class at Dublin in 1996 for Sir Lancelot, M.V Solo had to settle for second place that year in the middleweight class to the eventual Laidlaw Cup champion, Hugh McCusker’s Inter Exchange.

“He was sold then to Suzanne Finlay, another great customer and Sir Lancelot ended up in the North too.”

The Gordon family also have the rare distinction of producing the winners of both stallions classes at Dublin: the thoroughbred Moot Point, owned by son Dermot, and Irish Draught winner It’s The Quiet Man.

His dual Dublin Irish Draught champion (by Clonfert and bred by Thomas McCrann) was sourced as a yearling colt at Tattersalls Draught sale. “I just saw him and liked him, I thought he was a great mover so I bought him.”

Spotted by Patricia Nicholson at the stallion parade at Ballinasloe in 1994, she recommended the newly-approved three-year-old colt to Martha Du Pont. It’s The Quiet Man moved to Du Pont’s Delaware base for four years before returning back to stand at the Gordon’s Ballintubber Stud.

He also enjoyed success at the Irish Draught national shows, being supreme champion as a two-year-old and as twilight was setting in at the end of the 2006 IDHS national show in Ballybrit, won the stallion class there in vintage company.

No longer required

His stable companion, the millenium year Croker Cup winner, was found in England where he had produced William Fox-Pitt’s advanced event horse, Birthday Night. Ten years ago, when last featured in this newspaper, Anthony mentioned he was scouting for a thoroughbred successor but had little success. “I went to see a couple but there was nothing you would buy,” he said at the time.

A decade later, there are no plans to stand a stallion.“Not really, no. They’re [breeders] all going for the warmblood now, all going to the jumping job. You have to have performance and that’s the reality,” he said, matter-of-factly. Instead, Anthony has produced a number of successful Irish Draught graduates at the Horse Sport Ireland stallion inspections, including Carrabawn Cross and Offaly Clover for P.J Fitzpatrick and most recently, Derrynasagurt Silver.

That three-year-old Fast Silver colt is owned by another good friend made on the show circuit, Sean Scannell, from Ballyvourney. “I’ve bought a lot of mares from Sean down through the years. The horse has gone home now after he was broken and backed. Dermot does a lot of work with the horses here, the whole family does, they all join in,” said Anthony about Dermot’s siblings, Tony, Assumpta, Mairead and Helen. He and Peggy have “seven grandchildren and one pony! Callum, Dermot’s son, is mad about horses already.”

Coincidentally, while looking through old Galway County Show catalogues to check the 1996 three-year-old class entries, the front cover star that year is Smokey Duncan, mentioned by Connemara Pony Breeders Society president Ann Marie Conroy (page 65). Another Ballintubber Stud stallion, owned by Dermot, was the Smokey Duncan son Gunsmoke.

Sold to America but since returned to the Igoe family in Wicklow, Gunsmoke is the sire of Kynynmont Gunsmoke’s Gideon, Pam Liddell’s part-bred Connemara who successfully competes in Grand Prix dressage with Jessica Jo (JJ) Tate.

Helen, like her father, is an Irish Shows Association-listed judge and the pair are a frequent sight at shows. “She loves judging, we’d have great chats and I’d be explaining things,” said her proud father, doubling up as a mentor. “We would enjoy judging, the far away from home the better but we do our best anyway!”

Quality and conformation are his priorities when judging and he likes to see good turnout and presentation in the showring.

Can you breed a show horse or do they just ‘happen’? “You can breed one but you want a very good mare. It’s funny too because the good mare doesn’t always breed the right foal,” he responded.

“There’s still great English customers all the time, it’s easy to sell a nice horse. To get the right show horse though is not easy. The full Irish mare, they’re hardly there. There’s a handful but they’re nearly gone.

“Some of the warmblood horses mix in well with the Irish mare, you can get a good looker and the warmbloods definitely have a great step. The Irish horse is nearly a thing of the past. They’re all going for the jump at the end of the day. You get more money for the three-year-olds as jumpers than for the other jobs, that’s the reality of it,” he says, commenting on the changes in sport horse breeding and market demands.

“It’s hard to know how sales will go this year. We had four three-year-olds in, two Candys [Sligo Candy Boy], a Garryduff Jar of Hearts and a Diamond Discovery, getting ready for the lunging but that’s all gone by the wayside now. We had plenty of haylage so we kept them in to get them going and they’ll be going out to grass soon. There’s one mare covered this year, a Sligo Candy Boy in foal to Vancouver.”

The horse historian

“The Draughts are getting scarce too, compared to what they used to be,” he added, about an area and county, renowned for the breed. Another invaluable element to these kitchen table conversations with equine folklorists is their ability to fill in the gaps of pedigrees and put together pieces of Irish show jumping history.

Both of Trevor Coyle’s good performers Bank Strike and Red Fox, (‘He was bred just three fields away by Mickey Gilvarry and was by a great little horse, Stone Fox out of a Connemara-Irish Draught cross mare’) were bred locally.

“There was a couple of great stallions very near us; Power Station and his son, Station Master. Jim O’Donnell had Power Station and Stone Fox. Then there was Castle Venture, Highland Nectar and Blue Duster, who were all owned by a great stallion man, Johnny Carroll.”

According to Anthony, the beautifully-bred Blue Duster, by Epsom’s 1939 Derby winner Blue Peter, was the sire of Paddy McMahon’s 1973 European champion Pennwood Forge Mill, sold at Ballina’s foal fair, and Trevor Coyle’s Puissance specialist Bank Strike.

The Irish Draught namesake and rare outcross Blue Peter, “he stood with the Munnellys in Killala,” featured in a couple of Gordon’s Irish Draught champions.

Listing winners often results in a litany of names on a page but behind those names are years of hard work, good summers, bad summers, elation and disappointment. “It’s not too bad if you’re winning but it can be a long road home otherwise!” said this quiet-spoken and pragmatic gentleman, who would surely feature in a top exhibitor poll amongst showing followers.

“The horses were always good to me,” Gordon added. Surely as good as he is in providing the younger generation of exhibitors with sound advice and a masterclass at showing a horse each time he steps in the ring.